FLUTE GIRL FINALLY ran out of breath and clomped up the stairs far louder than she’d descended. Obviously, there wasn’t anyone there to sneak up on. I shut my eyes and managed to doze. When I woke, I felt a little better. I rolled over on my side and stared down at the spaghetti and broken shards of china. I’d have to be careful or I’d end up cutting myself and—
I blinked.
Stupid.
I’d been worried about finding a weapon, and there was an entire pile of sharp objects. Some were too tiny; I wouldn’t have been able to pick them up without cutting myself. But some were larger. Those could definitely do some damage.
I stood and walked around the bed. I chose a jagged piece the size of my palm. A pink flower lay nearly in the middle of it, as did a stain of spaghetti sauce. I picked out another piece of the flower part for good measure. And then, another. I walked back around the bed and slipped them under the pillow. Then I went to the bathroom and brought out the flimsy wastebasket.
I didn’t really want to clean up the mess. But it might mean a better chance of Mrs. Dixon not noticing that any of the pieces were missing.
The crunch of tires on gravel. A car door slammed.
“Crap.” Quickly, I reached for the debris.
Footsteps on the stairs signaled that I was nearly out of time.
Click!
The door flew open.
Mrs. Dixon stood there, in the same flowered smock, scrub pants, and shiny red clogs as before. “You’re cleaning?”
I nodded and tried my best to look like I wasn’t rushing to get done. But my heart pounded. A bead of sweat slipped down my temple.
She came toward me.
I froze, then straightened up and backed away from her. She held out her hands. “Here, you’re making more of a mess. I’ll do it.”
When I didn’t move, she took the wastebasket from me. I glanced down at the mess and walked around her, sitting on the other side of the bed as she cleaned. She said, “You seem to have recovered.” But her tone was almost snide, like she thought I had been faking.
“I took a nap.”
She paused and locked her eyes with mine. “Must be nice, to take a nap when you feel like it.”
My right hand clenched into a fist. “There’s not a lot else to do in here.”
She tilted her head. “I imagine when you’re home, you have the luxury to do whatever the hell you want, whenever the hell you want to do it.”
She was pissing me off. Was it on purpose?
Mrs. Dixon kept talking. “That must be nice. You didn’t even have to go to high school, did you?” Obviously, she knew the answer already or she wouldn’t have brought it up. Was she trying to make me sound like some kind of pampered, spoiled teenager who had always had everything handed to her?
Because sure, maybe it seemed like that on the outside. Maybe the damn bio on the back of my books made it seem that way, but I had been through a ton of lousy years before anything got better. The past few years had been pretty sweet, though. I loved having a nice car and being able to buy pretty much anything I wanted and choosing what I wanted to do every day. I wasn’t ashamed to admit that I relished going to conventions or conferences or book signings and having people fight to talk to me, get near me. Finally, I was the girl at the lunch table whom everyone wanted to sit by.
No one was going to make me feel bad about my success. No one. The universe owed me, and no one would get me to think differently. Especially not Mrs. Daryl Dixon.
I realized my face had grown hot, and my heart was pounding.
She bent back over, pushing the mess into the wastebasket. The back of her neck was exposed. Soft. Pale.
Vulnerable.
I gulped.
Those sharp pieces of broken plate hidden beneath the pillow could do some damage to that patch of flesh.
My hand slid under the pillow.
My fingers closed around a jagged piece of china. I quickly flipped it around so that I held the smooth side. Then I slowly got up on the bed, rising to my knees.
“You have no idea how lucky you have it, do you?”
Just keep talking.
Gingerly, not to mention painfully, I made my way across the bed.
Slide right hand. Right knee. Left knee.
Breathe.
“I try and teach my own daughter to be honest and work hard and good things will happen. She works so hard at her flute.”
Slide right hand. Right knee. Left knee.
Breathe.
“That should be enough in this country. Work hard. Do all the right things. Everything should be okay.” She sighed. “But I don’t want her to turn out like me. Working at a nursing home. Giving sponge baths to old people who can’t even remember my name from day to day.”
Slide right hand—
I leaned forward too fast and lost my balance, falling forward onto my right elbow. The mattress jiggled. I stifled a gasp and scrunched my eyes shut.
Please please please …
“I had a dream. I had a dream, and it was taken away. I don’t want that to happen to her.”
I slowly let out my breath and opened my eyes.
She was still cleaning up, oblivious to me.
Right knee. Left knee.
Breathe.
I paused, gazing down at that patch of pale skin. Then I lowered myself until I knelt on the edge of the bed, my weight distributed so that I was balanced solidly.
I leaned over and raised my good arm, poised above her.
One good jab, that’s all it would take.
I didn’t have to kill her, only create enough pain to startle her, distract her enough to be able to get out the door and lock it. Then I’d deal with Flute Girl.
“Because sometimes all the hard work and honesty in the world doesn’t mean a damn thing if someone else is dishonest and uses…”
I shut out her babble and licked my lips. Just one good jab.
I swallowed and tightened my grip.
You can do this.
My heart raced. I steeled myself, poised to pounce—
“MAMA!” Flute Girl stood in the doorway, eyes wide, arm thrust out, pointing at me.
I lost my balance and fell forward.
Before I went even a foot, Mrs. Dixon grabbed my wrist and yanked me all the way off the bed. I slammed face-first onto the floor.
The breath was knocked out of me, and a fresh bolt of pain shot through my shoulder. I hung on tight to that jagged piece of plate.
To no avail. Mrs. Dixon was on my back, pinning me to the floor. She put a hand on my head and smashed one side of my face into the bits of plate and spaghetti sauce smeared on the floor. Her knee crushed my wrist, and I couldn’t hold on anymore. My fingers opened. I let the weapon go.
Her knee lifted, and I tried to lash out with my good arm.
Something immediately pinned it down. Something warm and squirming and alive. Flute Girl was sitting on my arm. I couldn’t use my slung-up arm to move myself. I could only lie there, panting, my heart pounding so hard it drummed in my ears.
Mrs. Dixon left for a second. There was a rustle of bed-covers. Then her legs came into view.
“You had quite a stash.”
Clink.
A piece of the broken plate landed in the wastebasket.
Clink.
Another.
Then her weight was back on top of me. The two of them had me immobilized. My shoulder was on fire, and my cheek stung where broken bits of the plate dug into it.
Mrs. Dixon’s breath on my ear was hot and moist. “Did you really think I’d let you hurt me or my daughter?”
I said nothing.
Flute Girl piped up, “She could have killed you.”
Mrs. Dixon grabbed my hair and pulled up my head. She slammed it down again, my forehead hitting the green indoor/outdoor carpet—and the cement it barely cushioned—like a sledgehammer.
I moaned at the thick surge of pain.
Her mouth was back at my ear. “How would you feel? How would you feel if someone tried to hurt you?”
“Just kill me already.” A mumble only. I wanted to yell the words, wanted to scream them. But my head was splitting apart, and it was all I could do to talk. “You’ve been trying to kill me since you found me on the road.”
I braced myself for another head slam. Instead, her hold on me loosened for a moment. Actually, so long a moment that I considered trying to shove Flute Girl off my arm and make a break for it. But then her weight was back on top of me. “I’m sick of listening to you talk,” said Mrs. Dixon.
Good. I shut my eyes. Maybe she’ll leave.
Something brushed against my forehead, and I opened my eyes. A pink washcloth with orange polka dots dangled in front of me.
What the hell?
With strong, cruel fingers, she pinched my cheeks so my mouth opened. I tried to keep my lips glued together. But she pried them open and stuffed the washcloth in my mouth.
“No!” But the word was a grunt as the cloth filled my mouth. I gagged. I wanted to scream.
Breathe through your nose, breathe through your nose.
“There. Now maybe you’ll listen.”
Calm down, calm down. She just wants to talk.
Something smooth, cool, and hard slid down my cheek. Back up, then down. Languorously. Almost … seductively.
The breaths coming out of my nose whistled.
“Isn’t it funny, that one side of this is so smooth? Harmless. I could do this all day and nothing would happen to you.” The object kept stroking up and down my cheek.
“But the other side…”
The coolness was no longer on my cheek.
And then she held the third jagged piece of china in front of my eyes.
I whimpered.
And then the piece disappeared.
“… is so sharp.” The edge poked at my cheek.
I gasped, only there was no air to breathe in my mouth, so it was just a rapid inhale through my nostrils. Again I gagged, then struggled and tried to move, but they had me.
Slowly, the edge trailed down my cheek and back up.
“Imagine trying to do an author photo with a nice long scar.” She ran the edge back up and down.
A chill ran down my neck, and goose bumps rose on my arms.
Please don’t.
“Maybe we should carve up this whole face.”
Tears began to spill over. Don’t. Don’t.
She ran the edge up and down my face. “Don’t worry; you could still write, couldn’t you? Because God forbid you wouldn’t be able to give the world any more of your fabulous novels. I mean, you worked so hard on them.”
My strangled sobs were quiet groans, stuck in my throat.
Mrs. Dixon pushed the edge into my cheek. “Should we start here?” She pushed, breaking the skin.
An involuntary rush of warmth spread between my legs.
Flute Girl was off me in an instant. “Mama, she peed herself!”
“Oh, balls!” Mrs. Dixon got off me, too, and stood beside Flute Girl. They stared down at me. I could imagine what they saw: a sobbing lump with a washcloth sticking out of my mouth, my face in the spaghetti mess, my leggings darkening as they soaked through.
Mrs. Dixon shook her head and dropped the last piece of broken plate on the rest of the pile.
Clink.
She grabbed one of my feet and dragged me a few feet away from the mess. She quickly placed the remains into the wastebasket, no doubt making sure she’d taken every sharp piece out of my reach. They took the wastebasket and left without another word.
Click!
I ripped the washcloth out of my mouth and freed my sobs. I lay there and cried for my failed escape, for how they could hurt me like that and I could do nothing about it.
They’d managed to turn me into someone I thought I’d left behind.
I was Skunk Piss, once again.
My hand slipped up to my scalp and began to pull. And slowly, hair by stinging hair, I began to feel a little better.